For months, the world has been forced to wear face masks but sadly it has also seen face masks in places they shouldn’t be: storm drains, streets, beaches, and parks to name just a few.
Out of an estimated 52 billion masks that were manufactured globally in 2020, it’s believed that at least 1.56 billion have entered the oceans in 2020, resulting in an additional 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of marine plastic pollution
“Once plastic enters the marine environment, it’s very difficult to move,” said Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff, director of research for OceansAsia, reports WTMJ.
The marine conservation group has been working on this problem throughout 2020 and has been tracking the number of face masks washing up on a remote island south of Hong Kong since the pandemic started.
“About six weeks after COVID hit Hong Kong, so late February, we began finding masks, and lots of masks,” said Bondaroff. “What’s remarkable is we weren’t finding face masks before COVID.”
Masks are usually made from polypropylene, with experts saying that they’re made with thin fibers of plastic.
Bondaroff says that the report used a very conservative loss rate of 3 percent, with the average weight of 3 to 4 grams for a single-use polypropylene surgical face mask, resulting in the estimate.
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